Whether it's a result of cross-medium brand synergy or creative bankruptcy, the artistic and creative lines between the big and small screens have become increasingly blurred. 20 years ago a so-called 'film actor' wouldn't be caught dead starring in a TV show, but there's just so much quality content available that the biggest names in Hollywood are diving headfirst into episodic work.
The door swings both ways, and just as many movies have been made into TV shows as the other way around. The recent phenomenon has captured almost every genre from comedy to horror via drama and sci-fi, but action has always proved to be equally popular whatever size of screen it unfolds on. That being said, some action classics have fared much better than others when becoming the subject of a network spinoff.
10 Worked: Nikita
La Femme Nikita was the movie that first brought Luc Besson to mainstream attention, and proved to be one of the most influential European action directors of the early 1990s. The acclaimed thriller has been remade twice for both film and television, but The CW's series was by far the superior effort.
Borrowing the central concept without relying too heavily on it, Maggie Q stars as Nikita Mears, who returns after three years in hiding to bring down the organization that she was forced to escape from. The actress is just as adept at the fight scenes as she is with the more emotional story beats, and for four seasons Nikita was one of the finest and most underrated action/espionage shows on TV.
9 Didn't Work: Treadstone
Jeremy Renner's The Bourne Legacy showed what happens when the franchise tries to continue without Matt Damon's involvement, so it hardly came as a surprise when Treadstone ended up getting canceled after one season following reviews and ratings that were equally disappointing.
There was potential in the premise of following sleeper agents revived by the mysterious organization at the heart of the Bourne franchise, even if the connections to the movies were tangential at the best. Treadstone certainly tried hard enough to be relevant, but even the barrage of impressive set pieces weren't enough to keep audiences invested in the relatively flimsy premise.
8 Worked: Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles
After four attempts at delivering a worthy successor to James Cameron's all-timer Terminator 2: Judgement Day, including three reboots with an all-new cast and crew in the last decade, Dark Fate's disappointing performance at the box office might have killed the franchise for good. Maybe now everyone will agree that the best sequel happened on the small screen and largely flew under the radar.
The Sarah Connor Chronicles only ran for 31 episodes before being canceled, but some fans still haven't gotten over it. A much more worthy addition to the mythology than any of the feature length follow-ups, the episodic format gave the story a chance to breathe and added new layers onto the Terminator canon, while Lena Headey was superb stepping up to the plate and inheriting the title role from Linda Hamilton.
7 Didn't Work: Lethal Weapon
Lethal Weapon is one of the defining action movies of the 1980s, arguably the single greatest buddy cop caper ever made and for a lot of people, if it wasn't Mel Gibson and Danny Glover, then it wasn't Riggs and Murtaugh. The small screen spinoff had to overcome that stigma from the outset, but there was also a severe lack of originality in a standard procedural that just happened to have a recognizable title.
Matters weren't helped when star Clayne Crawford was dismissed for his behind the scenes behavior, leading Seann William Scott to join the cast as the new co-lead alongside Damon Wayans. Lethal Weapon spluttered along for the third and final season before being canceled, and not a lot of people mourned the loss, especially when there's already a fair amount of much better procedurals out there.
6 Worked: Agents Of S.H.I.E.L.D.
Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. was blatantly and very obviously designed to cash in on the popularity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, but once the show stopped worrying about what the movies were doing and developed an identity of its own, it quietly became one of the most underrated superhero shows on television.
Across seven seasons it reportedly came close to cancellation on many occasions, but the plucky series managed to reach a satisfying finale for those that had stuck with it for the long haul. Like every comic book show it stretched the limits of logic, realism and plausibility far beyond breaking point, but there was always something so heartening and enjoyable about finding out what Coulson and the gang had gotten mixed up in.
5 Didn't Work: Timecop
Calling Timecop the best movie of Jean-Claude Van Damme's entire career isn't exactly high praise given that the straight-to-video bargain bin has been his bread and butter for the last three decades, but Peter Hyams' high concept sci-fi boasts a solid concept and some decent ideas along with the requisite high-kicking action.
Spinning it off into a TV show was a terrible idea though, and ABC canned the series after only nine of the thirteen episodes had aired due to poor ratings and a general lack of awareness that it even existed. Without JCVD, Timecop had lost its biggest asset, and audiences just weren't interested in a watered-down procedural that just happened to feature time travel.
4 Worked: The Mandalorian
The Star Wars fanbase may have been divided like never before during the Disney era of the franchise, with both The Last Jedi and The Rise of Skywalker generating plenty of controversy and backlash for very different reasons, but most people can agree that The Mandalorian is the single greatest success to come out of a galaxy far, far away since the Mouse House took the reins in 2012.
The dream team of Jon Favreau and Dave Filoni seem to know exactly what the people want and go out of their way to give it to them, offering up a brand new story with some callbacks and iconography that diehards will instantly recognize. The Disney era has been characterized by relying far too heavily on the past, but The Mandalorian struck a near-perfect balance between old and new.
3 Didn't Work: Taken
The entire selling point of Taken was watching Liam Neeson travel around Europe punching people in the throat, and when you take that away then there isn't much worth sticking around for. The most surprising thing about the small screen prequel series is that it took two seasons for it to get canceled.
Clive Standen isn't a bad actor by any means, but nothing he brought to the role of Bryan Mills would be able to change the fact that the entire thing existed as an excuse to piggyback off of the success of an established brand. The basic setup can be found in any number of action-orientated network shows, meaning that a famous name was all Taken had to try and stand out from the pack.
2 Worked: Buffy The Vampire Slayer
Buffy the Vampire Slayer was such a runaway success that even some fans of the show took years to realize that Joss Whedon's fantasy teen action drama was based on the 1992 movie that he wrote, One that was ultimately reshaped by the studio into something completely unrecognizable.
Now able to do it justice, over the course of 144 episodes Buffy went on to become a cultural touchstone, and is now generally accepted as one of the best and most definitive TV shows of the 1990s. Even the spinoff Angel ran for five seasons, and the upcoming addition to canon being developed by Monica Owusu-Breen will come burdened with high expectations.
1 Didn't Work: Rush Hour
The Rush Hour trilogy isn't regarded as a benchmark of cinema, but the breezy action comedies overcame their many narrative and structural limitations thanks to the sparkling chemistry between leads Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker, who clearly very much enjoyed each other's company as the outtakes that accompanied the credits of every installment made abundantly clear.
The TV namesake lacked all of the star power and charisma of the movies, and was such an exercise in mediocrity that CBS canceled the show halfway through the first season when there were still six episodes left to air. That lack of confidence pretty much sums up how much of a bust Rush Hour was.
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